


warm

by astratic



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Canon, barry has nightmares, lup dissociates, they are working thru trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 06:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14372808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astratic/pseuds/astratic
Summary: "Barry, I spent so long in the umbrastaff screaming and crying for help, for anyone to listen, that I eventually gave up. And now…I'm so scared to say anything. It's like I can't convince myself anyone will listen. And you're so hurt by it all. I hurt you by leaving. I'm so sorry; I never meant to stay gone for so long."





	warm

Lup wakes up to a pitiful whimpering, and her heart sinks. This is the fifth night in a row. She reaches out in the haze of lingering half-sleep until her fingers meet with the warm and sturdy back of her boyfriend. She starts rubbing slow, gentle circles into the tense muscle there.

"Barry? Barry, babe, baby. Wake up." Lup scoots up behind him and wraps an arm over his waist, combing through his hair with her other hand. She kisses the bare skin of his shoulder and he calls her name in his sleep. The sound breaks her heart.

"Baby, wake up. I'm right here," she shakes his shoulder, "Barry, darling. I'm not going anywhere."

He groans and turns to look at her, blinking in confusion, "Lup?"

"Yep, in the flesh. You were having another nightmare."

He sits up then and sighs, "Ah, I'm sorry, Lup. I—"

Lup gets up too and presses herself into his back, as if she could leave an imprint there that would chase away his nightmares, remind him that she's here to stay.

"You, um," he mumbles, "You can go stay with Taako for a while if I'm... Disrupting your sleep."

"Elves technically don't even need sleep. You know that," she sighs and wraps her arms around his waist, tangling her fingers with his where his hand rests on his thigh. "I'll leave if you'd rather be alone, though. But to be honest I don't really see how that would help." Lup presses a kiss to the nape of his neck, and then another, and another, "Tell me how to help you, baby."

He snorts, "Teach me how to not need sleep," Barry twists to face her, blinking in the darkness. He's not wearing his glasses, but it's too dark for him to see anyway.

He reaches up and carefully takes Lup's face in his hands, and he kisses her. It's one of those gentle, honey-sweet, thoughtful kisses that melted her heart from the very beginning, and it does the same now. The two of them have crossed the universe—a hundred universes—together, and he still turns her insides to goo.

"Oh, don't do that now," she says against his lips, wrapping her arms over his shoulders to pull him closer. She kisses him again, "I'm not gonna want you to stop, and you need sleep."

He scoops her up with what she considers to be surprisingly little effort, and pulls her into his lap. Over the ten years they'd been apart Barry had gotten significantly more muscular... Lup might have been unnerved by it if she wasn't too busy swooning.

Barry kisses at her jawline and neck, whispering into her collarbone as if his words would sink into her skin like lotion, "Oh, I love you. I missed you so fucking much, Lup. The nightmares aren't new; I don't think I got a good night's rest the whole time you were gone."

She combs her fingers through his hair and hums, "All the more reason you need to sleep," she tilts up his head and catches his lips again, kissing him long and soft.

"I can't take my eyes off you," he whispers into her mouth, "I'm so afraid if I stop paying attention, you'll slip away again."

She pulls away suddenly, tears pricking at her eyes.

"Lup?"

"Goddammit. What is this? What are we doing?" She demands, scrubbing roughly at her face.

Barry is tense and contrite. "I dunno. I'm sorry. I—"

"Don't apologize," it comes out harsher than she intends, and she takes a careful breath and softens as she continues, "I think… I think I'm scared too. And I haven't been able to talk about it because that would mean I have to—uh—"

"Lup…"

She swallows and looks down at his hand where she'd taken it without really noticing. Barry has an odd circular scar around his right index finger that she doesn't recognize.

"Barry, I spent so long in the umbrastaff screaming and crying for help, for anyone to listen, that I eventually gave up. And now…I'm so scared to say anything. It's like I can't convince myself anyone will listen. And," she takes a deep, shaking breath, "you're so hurt by it all. I hurt you by leaving. I'm so sorry; I never meant to stay gone for so long." Her voice breaks on the last word, and Lup finds herself sobbing, to her dismay. She hates that she keeps crying; it feels so pointlessly weak.

"Why am I crying? You're the one with the nightmare," she wills the tears to stop, and they only come faster.

Barry pulls her against him, and she willingly curls into his chest. He shudders around her, and Lup realizes he's crying too. _'Perfect,'_ she thinks. _'Oh-for-two.'_

She lifts her head, extricating herself a little from him so she can look at his face.

"Lup," he says. It's hoarse, desperate. It hurts. Everything hurts right now. "Lup, I was so alone. I almost gave up. I wanted to. I wanted to let go, lose control. I almost gave in to the magic," he hangs his head, his grip around her waist tightening, "I was angry at you. For leaving; I didn't understand. And I felt—I feel so guilty for it, I'm drowning."

She reaches up to touch his hair gingerly, and he shakes with sobs again, "Lup, sometimes I thought—I thought you'd finally gotten tired of me. Thought you must've realized you're too good for me and gotten the hell outta dodge. We—in some ways, I know we were only together because of proximity. I mean, when everyone reset every year and you were stuck with the same six schmucks for a century it's not like you had _options_."

"Oh, baby—" she starts, but he cuts her off.

"And—a-and, I know all that is crazy. It'll upset you, and I'm sorry. I didn't want to say it. But I can't shake it—I can't forget the loneliness I felt. The constant feeling that I just. That if I was smarter or stronger or more capable, I would have done better. Would have found you. I should have found you," his voice is broken when he finishes, sobs and hiccups taking over and blocking any words he might have had left.

It's not often that Lup, loud and fiery Lup, feels so at a loss that she's speechless. Sure, she can tell him sweet nothings and reassure him until she's blue in the face, but she has no idea what to do confronted by the ocean of hurt he's holding in his chest. What can she say? Lup doesn't know. She just feels empty.

She feels such a disconnection sometimes—it's like being trapped for so long in the umbrastaff atrophied her being-a-person skills in a lot of ways. She is removed from the situation suddenly, like the stress was too much and her brain overloaded. She tries to feel affected by Barry's tears, but she has nothing: she's numb, and she would feel bad about that too if she could.

If he senses this switch flipping, he doesn't let on. Lup wants to bolt suddenly—she feels like she's reverted by about a hundred years; she can't deal with this now, right when he needs her most.

Lup and Barry have been together for over six decades though, and she refuses to accept that ten hard years apart would change either of them that much. She has always been honest with him—hiding things and running away on her own, she realizes, are what got her into this mess.

"Look, Barry," she puts a hand on his cheek, where it fits, where it has always fit perfectly, "I'm not myself right now. I'm not my best, and I am—" she swallows hard, "I'm afraid I might never be. I have always run away. Me and Taako… when it was just us? When things got too hairy, we'd cut and run without even thinking about it. He was all I ever needed," she shuts her eyes and thinks about Barry, about the both of them pining for decades before ever making a move. It was uncharacteristic of Lup, bold and impulsive as she'd always been. Something about Barry made her careful—he made her want to do things right and build something made to last. It feels mentally like plunging into ice water, trying to fight through her numbness and panic and find something to hold on to, but she remembers Barry. He was warm—he's still warm.

"You were the first thing after my brother that I felt like I couldn't afford to lose. And Barry, baby, you have so much love in you. You're bursting with it, and I've never been good at that. I love you so much it hurts, but I don't know how to show it like you do. I've always felt like you deserved better than what I can give you."

He's quiet now, still holding his head down.

"Part of me does want to run away. Not because I'm looking for something else, but because—because this is so fucking hard. We... Barry, we're messed up now, and I don't know what to do about it. I don't know how to reconcile it with—with this relationship we've built, that's so all-encompassing and wonderful and _fated_ that it feels overwhelming sometimes. I don't know, not yet. But I won't run away. I can't, because you're too important to me and too much a part of me. I can't even imagine being anywhere else, because I'm meant to be here. With you. I'm not going anywhere."

He sighs, a little puff of breath and palpable tension she senses he had been holding, "Lup. I'm sorry. I—I love you, gods do I love you—"

She smiles, a little sad, "You may have told me once or twice."

"This is so fucking hard, Lup," he looks up and takes her face in his hands, and she thinks he's going to kiss her again, but instead he just presses his forehead to hers, "I didn't think it would be this hard. In a decade I imagined having you back so many times, more than I want to remember, but I didn't think it would still hurt. I thought all that would go away once you were in my arms again."

"I wish it worked like that, baby."

Lup can feel him trembling, and she puts her hands over his where they rest against her cheeks.

"Are we okay?" He asks, barely audible.

"Mmm," she shrugs and kisses the skin over each of his cheekbones, "We will be."


End file.
